This was written days after the 2008 Fred Murr Memorial Chili & Chocolate Cook-Off.
Since Fred past away just 6 months ago, this was a very tough and emotional event for everyone. Honestly, any family party is hard, because Fred always enjoyed getting together. He was legendary…in fact, he was self-proclaimed “The Legend”…and that is what everyone called him!! Little did we know that he would make his presence known at this event.
We were frantically trying to get everything ready and Ben came up to me, holding a t-shirt, and said “look what Jackie found”. I started to read the off-colored, slightly off-centered words on the XXL shirt (Ben’s size).
In the middle was “Fred” and the words around it formed a circle…”The Man, The Myth, The Legend”.
I stared for a minute. And when I could finally speak I said, “She found it?? No, she had to have made it.” Ben insisted that she found it. I was dumb-founded. The hair on my arms stood up and I got the chills. I held it together until Ben went back to work getting things ready, then I started to cry. Fred was with us on Saturday and the shirt was just a physical reminder.
I composed myself and went to find Jackie (Ben’s cousin’s girlfriend) to find out the real story. Jackie works at Dreams with Wings and she takes some of the clients (with mental retardation) to different places to volunteer. One of these places is the Lord’s Kitchen and they sort through boxes and boxes of ‘reject t-shirts’ from an online printing company. For the past few weeks, they have been sorting through boxes in the front, but last week, Jackie decided to go to the boxes along the back wall. She pulled out THE t-shirt and was in shock when she read it. She immediately searched for other ones like it, because she said there are always multiples. Except for that one. It was the only one.
Sometimes the signs are hard to recongize, but other times they are so obvious that they really make you stop and think. This was one of the latter senarios. Ben wore the t-shirt for the Cook-Off and I know it helped him get through the day. It helped everyone get through the day.
